‘Little Difference between a Carcass and a Corpse’: Ecological Crises, the Nonhuman and Settler-Colonial Culpability in Australian Crime Fiction
Keywords:
crime fiction, nonhuman, climate change, ecocriticism, postcolonial literatureAbstract
In 1997, Stephen Knight described Australian crime fiction as a genre that is ‘thriving but unnoticed’ (Continent of Mystery 1). While in recent years Australian crime fiction has gained more attention amongst both academics and reviewers, it is still missing from an area of study in which I believe it demands more notice—that is, ecocritical discussions of Australian fiction. In this paper, I investigate the idea of Australian crime fiction as a largely underexplored representation of the modern environmental crisis, discussing how modern Australian crime fiction often portrays the troubling relationship between human violence and the settler-colonial decimation of Australia’s natural environments and nonhuman animals. Such a relationship indirectly alludes to the impact of a changing climate on Australian communities and ecosystems and suggests that popular genre fiction can contribute in profound ways to broader environmental considerations. With this ecocritical framework in mind, this paper analyses the representation of drought, bushfire and the nonhuman in Jane Harper’s The Dry (2016) and Chris Hammer’s Scrublands (2018), and what such texts reveal to readers about the criminal nature of anthropogenic climate change and the settler-colonial destruction of Australian habitats.
References
Works Cited
ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics). Measures of Australia’s Progress. 2006.
Author. 2019.
Botterill, Linda Courtenay. “Government Responses to Drought in Australia.” Beyond Drought: People, Policy and Perspectives, edited by Linda Courtenay Botterill and Melanie Fisher, CSIRO Publishing, 2003, pp. 49–65.
Brandi, Mark. The Rip. Hachette Australia, 2019.
---. Wimmera. Hachette Australia, 2017.
Chenery, Susan. “Chris Hammer: ’I Am a Serial Killer. I Kill My Darlings Left, Right and Centre.” The Guardian, 28 Sept. 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/27/chris-hammer-i-am-a-serial-killer-i-kill-my-darlings-left-right-and-centre.
Driscoll, Catherine, et al. Cultural Sustainability in Rural Communities: Rethinking Australian Country Towns. Routledge, 2017.
Ford, Clementine. “The Problem with the ‘Good Bloke’ Narrative.” The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 May 2018.
Fox, Candice. Crimson Lake. Bantam Press, 2017.
Gelder, Ken. “Recovering Australian Popular Fiction: Towards the End of Australian Literature.” Australian Literary Studies in the 21st Century, edited by Philip Mead, Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 2001, pp. 112–20.
Gelder, Ken, and Rachael Weaver. “Colonial Australian Crime Fiction.” The Anthology of Colonial Australian Crime Fiction, edited by Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver, Melbourne University Press, 2008, pp. 1–10.
Gibson, Ross. Seven Versions of an Australian Badland. University of Queensland Press, 2002.
Hammer, Chris. Scrublands. Allen & Unwin, 2018.
Harper, Jane. About Jane Harper. https://janeharper.com.au/About-Jane. Accessed 3 Feb. 2020.
---. The Dry. Pan Macmillan Australia, 2017.
---. The Lost Man. Pan Macmillan Australia, 2018.
Jones, RN, et al. Valuing Adaptation under Rapid Change. 2013.
Knight, Stephen. Continent of Mystery: A Thematic History of Australian Crime Fiction. Melbourne University Press, 1997.
---. “Crimes Domestic and Crimes Colonial: The Role of Crime Fiction in Developing Postcolonial Consciousness.” Postcolonial Postmortems: Crime Fiction from a Transcultural Perspective, edited by Christine Matzke and Susanne Mühleisen, Rodopi, 2006, pp. 17–33.
---. “Peter Temple: Australian Crime Fiction on the World Stage.” Clues: A Journal of Detection, vol. 29, no. 1, 2011, pp. 71–81.
Leane, Jeanine. “Aboriginal Representation: Conflict or Dialogue in the Academy.” The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, vol. 39, no. Supplement, 2010, pp. 32–39.
Lester, Amelia. “Jane Harper Started as a Business Reporter. Now She Writes Novels about Murder.” The New York Times, 31 Jan. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/books/jane-harper-lost-man-the-dry-murder-mystery-author.html.
Maslin, Janet. “‘The Dry’, a Page-Turner of a Mystery Set in Parched Australia.” The New York Times, 9 Jan. 2017.
Media Watch. “Reporting on Murder Suicides.” ABC News, 2018, https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/reporting-on-murder-suicides/9972228.
Meixner, Sophie, and Tom Lowrey. “Dead Livestock Paint Grim Picture of Fire Devastation and Logistical Challenges of Recovery Effort.” ABC News, 5 Jan. 2020, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-05/fire-bushfire-dead-livestock-farmers-agforce-animal-carcasses/11841868.
Morton, Timothy. Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence. Columbia University Press, 2016.
Pollak, Michael, and Margaret MacNabb. Hearts and Minds: Creative Australians and the Environment. Hale & Iremonger, 2000.
Potter, Emily. “Postcolonial Atmospheres: Recalling Our Shadow Places.” By-Roads and Hidden Treasures: Mapping Cultural Assets in Regional Australia, UWA Publishing, 2015, pp. 75–86.
---. Writing Belonging at the Millennium: Notes from the Field on Settler-Colonial Place. Intellect, 2019.
Renaldi, Erwin, and Erin Handley. “Jakarta Residents Inundated as Severe Flooding Kills Dozens of People in Indonesia.” ABC News, 2 Jan. 2020, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-02/indonesia-jakarta-flooding-victims-indundated-heavy-rains/11837612.
Rigby, Kate. “Writing in the Anthropocene: Idle Chatter or Ecoprophetic Witness?” Australian Humanities Review, vol. 47, no. Nov, 2009, pp. 173–87.
Rose, Deborah Bird. “Anthropocene Noir.” Arena Journal, vol. 41, 2013, pp. 206–19.
Sjö, Sofia. “Madness, Otherness and Transformation: Exploring Religion in Nordic Crime Films.” Journal of Religion and Film, vol. 20, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1–21.
Smee, Ben. “Brave or Naive? Conservative Wagga Surprises with Climate Emergency Declaration.” The Guardian Australia, 20 July 2019.
Viskic, Emma. Resurrection Bay. Echo, 2015.
Wilson, Laura. “The Best Recent Crime Novels - Review Roundup.” The Guardian, 21 Dec. 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/21/best-recent-crime-novels-review-roundup.
Yell, Susan. “‘Breakfast Is Now Tea, Toast and Tissues’: Affect and the Media Coverage of Bushfires.” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy, vol. 137, 2010, pp. 109–19.
Zhang, Yang, et al. “Effects of Climate on the Size of Wildfires in the Eucalyptys Camaldulensis Forests and the Dry Lands of the Riverina Biogregion, Australia.” Forest Ecology and Management, vol. 401, 2017, pp. 330–40.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
The copyright for articles in this journal is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use with proper attribution in educational and other non-commercial sectors.Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.1 Australia
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.1 Australia License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.1/au/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
